The Murenger and Other Stories

Early in 2019 I was approached by the writer, Jon Gower, about the possibility of working on the visual side of a new collection of short stories he had coming out. I’d previously collaborated with Jon on an article for CCQ Magazine that was connected to my ‘Revelations’ project, so he knew how I worked, and the offer was essentially that I would have free reign to make an image for the cover and some images inside the collection.

For various reasons it was an interesting proposition; I really like Jon and his writing, I’d never made a book cover before, and it struck me as being a fascinating site for which to make a new work.

‘The Murenger’ of the title refers to Ye Olde Murenger House, an old pub in Newport, South Wales, a personal favourite of Jon’s and the site of one of the main stories in the collection. Logically enough, that was to be my starting point for the cover. The pub is of a mock-Tudor style and so has the most beautiful windows, which I chose to represent on the cover. In part, I liked the idea of the cover being representative of that moment when you’re stood outside a pub, about to step in to the warmth, chatter and welcome of whoever, and whatever, may be inside.

Then in terms of the images inside, Jon was generously-clear that he had no desire for me to illustrate the stories and that I could use that space create something that had its own internal logic. As such, I read each of the stories in turn and noted down themes or objects or ideas that I could see in each one, then cross-referenced them all to try and identify a coherent theme or approach.

There were many such things, but I was particularly drawn to the various mentions of food, along with light or flames. The idea I developed was to take foods mentioned in the story and photograph them in such a way as to end up, visually, somewhere between an Old Master’s still life and a snatched image of table in the corner of a pub illuminated by the light of a roaring fire.

It was at this point in the process I experienced the moment that happens in every project, when you’ve thought everything through, planned it in your head, and then a spanner drops out the sky right in to the proverbial works. In this instance it was following my request to the pub as to whether I could spend a couple of hours in there after closing-time one night to take this set of photos; Jon was a regular, the book was named after the pub, surely there would be no problem…

The landlord couldn’t have been nicer, but explained that it unfortunately wouldn’t be possible as the brewery had a firm ‘no photography’ rule in their pubs.

As always happens, this led to a rethink - not of the idea itself, just how I would approach it - and I think they probably turned out all the better for it. I, ultimately, had way more time than ‘a couple of hours’ to set up the shoot and get the images just how I wanted them. Which you can see below:

The book came out in December 2019 and is published by Three Impostors - a small publisher based in Newport, South Wales.